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15 MMORPGs To Keep An Eye On In 2013

Recently I wrote a list of 2013 Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) that gamers should keep an eye on.

Unfortunately, I left out four really interesting games.

Fifteen seems like a reasonable number, so I’ll include the previous list here—with one subtraction, Wizardry, which after some play time has proven to be a great disappointment—and four additional MMOs racing into mortal combat in this highly competitive market.

The four new MMORPGs to make it onto this list will come first, and older entries afterwards.

This is for reader convenience, primarily. Nice to have it all in one tidy list rather than bounce back and forth between two.

4 More MMORPGs to Keep an Eye On in 2013

Paradox Interactive’s free-to-play, browser-based, lo-fi crafting MMO takes place not in a fantasy realm or the far-future of science fiction worlds, but rather in a slightly magical time in America’s history: the happy days of Salem and the colonials.

“Cast in a mold of cute-gothic Salem’s lighthearted art style makes for the perfect contrast to the otherwise grim realities of open player-versus-player combat and permanent death,” Paradox writes in their description of the game. “Experience Squonks, Hidebehinds, Witchcraft and the fullest freedom of a sandbox conceived in Liberty.”

The game is currently in beta and should be a fun diversion for all of you crafting types.

It’s hard to say very much about the next iteration of EverQuest, one of the longest-running MMOs of all time. EverQuest Next is being billed by Sony Online Entertainment as the next generation of MMO, not just a revamp of EverQuest.

“We’re not trying to make WOW2 or Everquest 2.5 – we’re making something that we think will define the next generation of MMOs,” SOE president John Smedley told PC Gamer.

And while information, screenshots, and anything else I might normally use when discussing an upcoming game remain anemic at best, it does look like we may see this launch before the year is up.

“Players will get their hands on an actual release version of what we’re doing late [this] year – and I don’t mean a beta,” Smedley told Gamasutra.

One of the most impressive looking MMORPGs in development, and will launch this year on PC and PS3 simultaneously (and, one imagines, will later come to Sony’s next-gen system.)

The game initially launched in 2010 to overwhelming negative reception. Square Enix pulled it, revamped it, and rebranded the game “A Realm Reborn” which has, one suspects, a double meaning.

While not the first Final Fantasy MMO, it does look like the most ambitious. In fact, the game sounds like it should be a very strong offering, with an overhaul to the server engine, the graphics engine, the UI, the gameplay, and just about everything else. The makeover should transform the game in almost every imaginable way, and hopefully Square Enix’s impressively drastic move will pay off.

Wizardry may be a black mark on Sony Online Entertainment’s record, but games like Planetside 2 have met with much more positive feedback.

SOE’s upcoming Dragon’s Prophet looks fascinating. The sandbox MMO’s most striking feature is, of course, dragons—dragons you hunt and capture and then train and ride. These beasts not only accompany you on your questing, they actively inform how your player develops.

But it’s not just a game about dragons. It’s also about building your own house, anywhere you like, however you like; it’s about guilds competing for territory in the Frontier system, building and destroying each others’ fortifications while forging player-created empires.

In other words, it’s a serious attempt at a fantasy sandbox MMO that has enormous potential to be really unique and different. The monster-hunter aspects should be cool as well, and the game looks very pretty. Of course, I’m always a bit worried when a game promises so much, but I remain optimistic.

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So those are the four new MMOs for your consideration. Below you’ll find eleven MMO’s from my initial list.

Previous 11 MMORPGs to Watch for in 2013

Phantasy Star Online 2 should be interesting. It will be available in 2013 on PC, iOS, Android, and the PlayStation Vita. This is good news for the Vita in particular, which is a great little piece of hardware with far too few games. A free-to-play MMO can only help the little handheld.

The game is action-based, focusing on counter-attacks and real-time battles. I never played the original Phantasy Star Online, but the sequel certainly looks like something I’ll download on to one of those very expensive proprietary memory chips the Vita uses.

WildStar looks a lot like the love child of World of Warcraft and Borderlands 2. And it has “Star” in the title. That’s two games in a row with “star” in the title. But I digress. The game is a humorous, colorful planet exploration MMO bringing a much needed dose of science fiction to the fantasy-saturated genre.

City of Steam is an action-RPG with MMO elements. The steampunk setting separates it from most other MMOs on the market. Even MMOs with some steampunk elements tend to keep those features on the fringe. The game just left Closed Beta, so an Open Beta should be just around the corner for players to play—in their browsers thanks to the Unity Web Player. The browser-based game category is getting bigger and bigger, and City of Steam joins already popular MMOs like Drakensang Online sometime in 2013. They’re also trying to get the game Greenlit so it can appear, oh-so-fittingly, on Steam.

It’s been in closed beta for centuries, but the free-to-play action-RPG Path of Exile is now in open beta, and will soon be released to the public in post-beta form (not sure what we’re supposed to call it then.) The dark, gritty action-RPG isn’t really an MMO, but it is online, and you can find massive amounts of other players to quest with. For solitudinous hermits like your humble narrator, outside of town you can adventure solo to your heart’s content.

The Third Act was released alongside the open beta, and I haven’t played my way to it just yet (my characters were all wiped, as were everyone else’s, and I haven’t found time to get all leveled up again) but the new Act adds 50% more content to what was already a pretty decent-sized game. Developer Grinding Gear Games plans to continue to release new Acts and content regularly, while funding the game through “ethical” micro-transactions that are, so far as I can tell, almost entirely aesthetic.

Publisher Bigpoint is no stranger to browser-based MMOs, so I’m hoping the final product for Game of Thrones: Seven Kingdoms is as fun as it sounds. The sandbox MMO is yet another sandbox style game, pitting three factions (the Baratheons, the Starks, and the Lanisters) against one another. You play as a regular warrior from a minor House and can pledge fealty to one of the major Houses, betray them whenever you like, and engage in massive castle sieges. It sounds like it could be the very first Game of Thrones video game that might, in some small way, live up to the books. The game will feature some material from and consistency with the HBO show, though how that actually factors into gameplay remains to be seen.

ArcheAge is one of the coolest sounding MMOs I’ve read about. Not only is there full-fledged naval combat, there are also hang-gliders. You can race people on your hang-glider. And yeah, they had me at hang-glider. Or maybe at naval combat. Either way, I’m sold (at least in theory.)

The game is a great big sandbox MMO where you can build your own house, work with trade routes, and engage in PvP. Whenever I start getting actually excited about an MMO I realize that I need to check my expectations, but ArcheAge is certainly doing a good job at making me want to play it.

Bless reminds me a lot of Guild Wars 2. It’s built using the Unreal Engine 3, and it looks gorgeous. It’s also supposed to be very story-driven, with a storyline for each of the ten races designed to be emotionally charged. Whenever I see MMO screenshots that look as good as these, I always check my optimism.

Guild Wars 2 looks really good, but the screenshots made it look better (a trick the original Guild Wars was also guilty of.) After all, bandwidth is an issue when you’re playing online, and an MMO can only deliver so much graphical goodness before the pipes get too clogged. But man, that elephant looks amazing doesn’t it? Developer/Publisher: Neowiz Games

No classes, no levels, and no European medieval setting. In Age of Wushu, you play as a martial artist inside (yet another) sandbox world, though this time it’s a beautiful East Asian setting. The game is billed less as a grind-and-level game and more of a celebration of art and music and, yeah, intricate martial arts combat.

You pick a martial arts style and then hone your craft. But you also pick a profession, and live as part of the world. I like the idea of doing away with levels. I think RPGs in general crutch on the leveling system way too much. Go back to the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, and you’ll learn rather quickly how unimportant levels used to be.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, though not of Original D&D, Neverwinter may not be the prettiest new MMORPG but it’s gotten solid feedback from people like Forbes’s Daniel Tack so far. I’m more interested in the Foundry DIY world-building system, which allows players to create content that is then curated and added back into the Neverwinter universe, than I am in the game.

But even the game, so far, looks to be shaping up into a solid, even slightly old-school, action-RPG.

I’m not actually sure whether this is going to come out in 2013 (and honestly, with the nightmarish development involved in putting together an MMO, maybe none of these will come out in 2013 except the ones that, you know, already have) but it looks really cool.

A big, sandbox world, totally seamless, with sort of absurdly beautiful people apparently modeled after Skyrim mods, Black Desert has been one of the least-marketed games I’ve ever seen and has still managed to put together one of the most exciting MMO trailers I’ve ever seen—which you should go watch over here. Even if some of the elves look suspiciously like Orlando Bloom.

Finally, we come to the most controversial entry in our long, long list: The Elder Scrolls Online. Many people worry that this could spell the doom of the single-player Elder Scrolls game. To that, I say pfaw! Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls games sell far, far too many copies and expansions to die at the hands of a maybe-successful MMORPG. Besides, TESO (for short) looks really good.

Combat is overhauled, for one thing, and I’m not that big of a fan of the combat in games like Oblivion and Skyrim, so who knows?

Maybe we’ll see an evolutionary step that will actually translate to better single-player games from the franchise.

Just as importantly, TESO is huge, spanning all the Elder Scrolls realms. I’m not going to be stuck in gray, dreary Skyrim, or boring, generic Cyrodiil. I can go to Morrowind and beyond. Just like with the rest of these games, there’s no telling if it will be any good, or if it’s good if it will capture a big enough audience to compete against the princes of the market, but I’m hoping TESO succeeds.

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About Final Fantasy XIV’s original soundtrack (100% composed by Uematsu)…it was already amazing. Then they got a few new composers for new tracks that were added after release / A Realm Reborn and…they’re also amazing.

I’d recommend checking out the Eorzean Frontiers album that’s available on iTunes store. It’s nowhere near a full release, but it’s a nice collection of some of the best area and battle themes in the game. The rest of the songs can be found pretty easily on youtube.

I always say FFXIV’s initial failure was good for two reasons: Naoki Yoshida and Masayoshi Soken. Those two guys really deserve a huge paycheck increase once ARR is released.

These past two years have been interesting for the MMO genre with first person shooters to Rpg’s and all of these games have potential to be great. The Elder Scrolls Online will probably be the standout being a Elder Scrolls game with Bethesda’s backing and its awesome to hear that Jeremy Soule is doing the music but the one with the really cool concept is ArcheAge I think if that MMO has enough support it could be the one remembered for.

Phantasy Star: The need to push MMORPGs past the PC barrier is becoming critical. This doesn’t mean the mobile or tablet version must do 100% of what a PC client will do. Nor does that mean it actually has to be the same game. But in this connected and multi-platform era, we have to do more than just bury games on the desktop. So this game has my interest. Looks good, plays on up to three devices from my PC to smartphone and tablet. However it involves Sony, which only recently was replaced with EA as the most loathed MMORPG company in history.

Wildstar: This game has my attention. It seems to not take itself too seriously. They are painting with a broad brush in really bright colors. It could draw some playtime from me. They seem to be managing expectations well, which is a lesson the industry is slow to learn.

Game of Thrones: I lump GoT into a bucket of properties that get compared to Tolkien’s work more than they should. This game builds on a currently popular title, but boils down to just a fight for power and territory control. Both in Lore and game play, it doesn’t feel like a game that is going to have long-term potential. Thus I will be skipping it.

ArcheAge: Looks interesting. It has features that could be interesting. Worth a look but not deep investment in playing until it shows all its cards and grows roots.

Bless: Smells like Age of Conan II. Cute promo graphics aren’t able to sell me anymore.

Wizardry: Too dark. Evil things will happen. And that is just because Sony Online Entertainment is publishing it.

Age of Wushu: Coming soon as an Olympic sport! Looks very nice, has a great premise, has a kind of store I’m not sure makes the rest of the game worth investing time into. Still, in this game there is a wider clue to possibly great MMORPGs. It isn’t about a book or movie, but an era and historic background. One could see an American Wild West MMORPG built like this. Plus it gets back to a core feature that companies ignore too often: people want to dwell in-game. These are escapes, virtual vacations and just a way to get away from the real world. Too much time gets sunk on gameplay and system mechanics and not enough on sandbox.

Black Dessert: This is a game that looks like Lord of the Rings Online, if it were done with all-new client software. The gameplay trailer was amazing and will be a game to watch for expectations rising and falling. They seem to be playing the expectations management game well. They didn’t release a graphically unrelated trailer, are saying little and making few promises. And they are taking their time developing the game. Good signs.

Elder Scrolls Online and Neverwinter: I lump both of these games into the same bucket as Game of Thrones. I don’t think they will have legs and if they do linger for years, they are not going to move the marketplace. Their main appeal is a connection to well known game titles. They also don’t even look like they are trying to create a serious MMORPG as much as a glorified single player game. I won’t even register.

Salem: Burn baby burn. Cute game, no interest. Now if it were Harry Potter…….

Everquest Next: You lost me at Sony. You assured I would never consider the game by quoting Smedley.

Final Fantasy: Again, Sony. No.

Dragon Prophet: Might as well distribute the game on Memory Sticks, the trailers on Beta, and the soundtrack on Minidisc. Because if Sony is doing it, I’m avoiding it.

MMORPGs represent a combination of social, creative, financial and even emotional investment to me. Many factors go into choosing to play a game, but since you ask about Sony, I will focus on that. If I am going to sink myself into a game, I need to trust the company publishing it. I look to how Sony Online Entertainment has handled current and past games. I consider the personalities that put themselves forward as running or speaking for the games. Sony seems to treat their MMORPGs like cattle. They buy in volume, invest little, and cancel them with little warning. I am not a quick-to-rant person, the likes of which plague MMORPG forums across the industry. The way they handle their fans and games leaves me feeling cold. I can’t see laying out all I put into an MMORPG if I have to worry about the publisher shutting it down with 30 days warning. Electronic Arts has never been a company I trust either. I’ve decided to NOT play Simcity less because I dislike the games look or feel, than the fact I don’t trust EA. They will shutter the game in 24 months if it doesn’t make “enough” profit. I only play SWTOR because it has the guardian angel of Lucas/Disney looming over it.

I play LOTRO because first, it is the Lord of the Rings, but also because I was impressed by Turbine in 2006 during beta. They also had managed Asheron’s call, stood by it, and had done a decent job with DDO. Asheron’s Call 2 closed…..though even that is been revived. Even after Warner Brothers bought them, I continue to see a solid group of people doing good work. Witness the amazing care and effort in the Bree revamp in LOTRO. It wasn’t an expansion, it didn’t add a single quest, it wasn’t really more than cosmetic. Yet it was such an amazing bit of work it has been hailed as a wonder by the players and served to demonstrate good will from Turbine. I trust Turbine, however imperfect it can be, because they do the right thing.

If Wargaming.net made an MMORPG, I’d play in an instant. I do play World of Tanks, have lavished handsome sums of cash in enjoying myself there. Tuesday, a very nice, very high quality Tee shirt arrives. The reason? Nothing more than having a tier 10 tank. When they bump tanks around, they handsomely compensate players. When they introduce a new tank tree, they give you a freebie. They compensate anytime there is a downtime. They don’t skimp on what your real-world money buys you. Yet they also make nearly 100% of store items accessible in realistic terms, for non-premium players. They sponsor hunts for old warplanes. They are funding scholarly books on tank warfare and technology. They CARE. Plus the product is pretty darn good. I TRUST Wargaming.net.

I may get burned someday. I accept that. Nothing lasts forever. But I am comfortable that if LOTRO ever did close, I wouldn’t regret my time and will take away something lasting. My guild Sons of Numenor, our Tolkien Society Smial “Tolkien Aficionados,” our LOTROcon at Cedar Point every July, friends, sites, sounds, and more. All of this came from feeling I could trust and invest, and it was all worth it. SWTOR may get there in the next year, if it continues to stabilize. We started work on a Star Trek Online project that is maturing.

But play a Sony Online Entertainment game? Or a non-Star Wars EA MMORPG? No thanks.

Just an FYI: Sony’s only connection to the Final Fantasy franchise is in its console systems; Square Enix both develops & publishes all Final Fantasy titles, which is neither owned by nor partnered with Sony or its subsidiaries.

I can clearly see why you don’t like SOE and i can relate i loath EA above all else… but at the same time i think it is unfair to judge a game based on a publisher… publisher is not the game developer, and FFIV has absolutely nothing to do with SOE. Sony’s Ps3 and SOE are 2 different departments fyi, and FFXIV is a Square Enix game. I hate SE why? i hate SE because they released 14 in an alpha phase ruined the good FF name and placed 1000 restrictions within the game. But i love their games see where i’m getting at? So yes i am getting 14 and it will be imo the game of the year when it does come out.

Hello Erik Kain you seem cool i think its awesome your a reporter . but i saw some of your comments and responses on here felt the need to reply to the Sony comment of why some gamers hate sony this is just my opinion how ever but it is shared with many gamers out there sony should not be aloud to touch any mmorpg other then ever quest the reasoning is simple take the first and one of the best mmorpgs i ever played called The Matrix Online as soon as sony got ahold of it in my opinion they raped it beyond belief they took all the good aspects out of the game example multi fighting and its unique awesome combat system CR1 and made a sad excuse for a second version of its combat system and the cinematics as well went down hill from full blown animation to black and white pictures with sound effects it was pathetic . They kill good games and have a bad rep because of it im sure there are many more they have ruined but that one was the one most important too me.

Wizardry Online seems to be a like or hate (note: not love) affair. It’s alright, but I can see why some people would get put off by it. Salem, oh I so wanted to love it, especially with all the great times I’ve have playing Haven & Hearth. Unfortunately it’s the same exact game, with 3d tacked on which makes doing some basic tasks like placing building etc a very tedious process of flattening land. With the addition of microtransactions, and not having my usual group of friends willing to join me in the closed beta it got boring rather quickly. I can imaging it’s an all out PvP war like Haven & Hearth usually descends into once people start getting those skills as well now.